Scientists: Pollution could combat global warming

[Aquawind]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/11 ... index.html


Wooohooo.. Halarious..

[Yarrah]

Well, I hope this doesn't give people the idea that they should pollute more.

[Aquawind]

Well, I hope this doesn't give people the idea that they should pollute more.

You got that right! Scary concept imo..

[Extremeweatherguy]

I think it is actually a pretty cool concept...IF they do it correctly. There will be a very fine line between helping the earth out and freezing it though. Too much haze created could lead us to a mini ice age!

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

We can stop global warming by putting into the Atmopshere, the same thing that Volcano's put into the Atmpshere. Bring back CFC"s; may hurt the ozone, but it will stop global warming. Lets all work to put cooling stuff into the Atmopshere. SAVE EARTH


I'm not kinding, this is the best way to turn the earth climate around.

[senorpepr]

I need to get stronger glasses... I would have sworn Matt-hurricanewatcher said we should add more CFCs and hurt the ozone layer...

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

No glasses needed, thats what I said. But anything that can reverse the co2,Methane, would be a step up to stoping global warming. We could build huge plants to pump it into the Atmosphere. CFC, is kind of like buying a snake to take out a rat. But something safer, that will not hurt the Ozone will be good. We can fight this by countering it.

[senorpepr]

Wow... this goes up there with your "nuke the sun" comment.

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

What else can we do? I've seen that we might went to change the Atmosphere of Mars, with Teraforming it. I'm only saying using a coolient that would reverse global warming. It would give us some good knowledge how to do Mars, if we choose to also. If we do it under the knowledge of the smartest people on this planet, could it be possible to put a counter on global warming. I'm not saying that some one like me is going to be doing this.

Some sciencists want to do it to Mars.(Reverse)

[Yarrah]

Matt, you do know why the ozone-layer is here and what it protects us from, right?

The ozone-layer is something vital, it would be madness to weaken it further, unless one wants to get cancer.

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

Yes, I know what the ozone is for. But I also said, we can find some coolient that would leave the ozone alone, then that would be a good idea. Also the snake to catch the rat comment. I don't want the Ozone to go away its very important.

[Yarrah]

Problem is, there isn't another coolant which doesn't worsen the enviromental situation. The only solution right now is to cut back greenhouse gas emissions.

[curtadams]

Well, we *were* doing this in the mid-century and the effects of all those sulfates - acid rain and ozone depletion - was substantially worse than any benefits from lowering the earth's temperature by the 0.2 degrees or so it may have done. There's a reason sulfate emissions are so strongly restricted now. Worldwide acid rain, 10 or more times worse than the worst it ever got, continued for centuries, would be even worse than global warming.

[curtadams]

CFCs are not the "coolant" in question. CFCs are actually a greenhouse gas. The coolant in question is sulfur dioxide, which combines with water to form sulfuric acid. Sulfuric acid forms these nice white microdroplets which hang around in the air a long time. Although this would help with global warming, it's obviously a bad idea to blanket the entire earth in sulfuric acid.

[Aquawind]

Thank You curtadams! These "scientists" are stupid to suggest sucha thing. Adding more chemicals in an enviroment we know little about on a global basis sounds pretty scary to me. I am not convinced on mans impact on GW yet but to suggest adding pollution is rediculious. Now they are talking about a possible crazy reaction with higher concentrated chemicals.. Sounds like a mess in the Lab to me..

[x-y-no]

The lifetime of sulphates in the stratosphere is a year or two at best - so this would be a massive (and massively expensive) project. And the moment we stopped doing it, within a year or so the global temerature would leap up to whatever it would have been all along absent this program.

And as curtadams points out, there's the issue of enormous additional acid rain falling worldwide on a continuous basis for as long as we keep this up.

I'm sorry, but it sounds like a colossally stupid idea to me.

[curtadams]

Thank You curtadams! These "scientists" are stupid to suggest sucha thing. Adding more chemicals in an enviroment we know little about on a global basis sounds pretty scary to me. I am not convinced on mans impact on GW yet but to suggest adding pollution is rediculious. Now they are talking about a possible crazy reaction with higher concentrated chemicals.. Sounds like a mess in the Lab to me..

This brings up a side issue. Some costs are obvious but the benefits will be unclear. It will be very hard to tell how much we gain from reducing temperature by a given amount for a given period. That makes it politically implausible. How could you get people to sign up for sterilizing lakes and killing forests because it *might* be helping with Greenland melting but we'll never know how much?

[DrCloud]

The "proposal" (and it's really not a proposal yet, just an outrageous idea) that Paul Crutzen floated is to put sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere, where they'll last longer than tropospheric aerosols. Nonetheless, it would be necessary to have nearly continual launches, either rockets or balloons, of the stuff to keep enough up there to do the trick.

Crutzen's position is that this is a sort of last resort strategy -- reducing atmospheric greenhouse gases (and Curt's right: CFCs are greenhouse gases, extremely strong ones at that) just isn't working and we've got to do something.

For better or worse, when Nobel Prize winners speak, people listen, and this thing is generating lots of discussion. HPH

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

The "proposal" (and it's really not a proposal yet, just an outrageous idea) that Paul Crutzen floated is to put sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere, where they'll last longer than tropospheric aerosols. Nonetheless, it would be necessary to have nearly continual launches, either rockets or balloons, of the stuff to keep enough up there to do the trick.

Crutzen's position is that this is a sort of last resort strategy -- reducing atmospheric greenhouse gases (and Curt's right: CFCs are greenhouse gases, extremely strong ones at that) just isn't working and we've got to do something.

For better or worse, when Nobel Prize winners speak, people listen, and this thing is generating lots of discussion. HPH

Thats what I was trying to say...Its something we might need to do.

[Aquawind]

The "proposal" (and it's really not a proposal yet, just an outrageous idea) that Paul Crutzen floated is to put sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere, where they'll last longer than tropospheric aerosols. Nonetheless, it would be necessary to have nearly continual launches, either rockets or balloons, of the stuff to keep enough up there to do the trick.

Crutzen's position is that this is a sort of last resort strategy -- reducing atmospheric greenhouse gases (and Curt's right: CFCs are greenhouse gases, extremely strong ones at that) just isn't working and we've got to do something.
For better or worse, when Nobel Prize winners speak, people listen, and this thing is generating lots of discussion. HPH

Is the bolded part his or your opinion? That does not sound like a last resort strategy statement. Are we at a desperate stage now in that we have to do something? This is not a realistic something imo. GW is a long term trend (human enhanced somewhat)and this is a short term fix from what I am reading. Sulfate aerosols in the concentration needed sounds like quick planetary suicide..versus a enhanced natural cycle that Will trend the other direction in time. I guess some are assuming the human race will be wiped out by GW so planetary recovery is moot..